Ecomyths is a blog designed to help people think for themselves. Empirical data are contrasted with theories to examine axiomatic myths: ideas taken to be so well accepted that they don't need to be proven. It seeks to change ideas, correct fallacies and challenge dominant constructs by having people read, think and reflect for themselves about contemporary issues. Facts don't change your perspective. Your perspective changes your facts.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

the long slow death of a faulty paradigm

The environmental movement is as promiscuous with its ‘ethics’ as it is with ‘The Science’. This pithy conclusion comes courtesy of Ben Pile writing in Spike on the non-similarities between Fakegate (the falsification of material to incriminate the Heartland Institute) and Climategate 1 and 2 (the massive leak of evidence of malfeasance by the core of the IPCC climatocracy).

Ben ably summarizes both the facts of the Hearltland situation and the inescapable reality that the opposition to the imposed AGW consensus at the center of the IPCC has never been a conspiracy, it has never been massively funded and it is neither exclusionary, nor authoritarian in its ideology. Indeed, perhaps the only factor that universally applies to all climate realists is their sense of abhorrence of an authoritarian, imposed ideology of a conformed political consensus being imposed under the guise of an incomplete science.

Fakegate reveals how deeply the environmentalism narrative of limits, pessimism and dystopia is embedded within academic and intellectual discourse. Environmentalism has become so convinced of the correctness of its own mythology that its adherents are no linger able to see the blue skies of future prosperity for the storm clouds of their own bleak attitudes. Dialogue is near to impossible. Those who question the stasist paradigm are dismissed, ostracized and finally, framed with falsehoods.

Except, a funny thing happened along the way. Those pesky skeptics refused to wear the tag of denial, sulk and wallow in shame -- instead they stood firm, resolute and, as realists, re-affirmed the primacy of empirical data, scientific method, the differentiation of science from politics, the dissociation of economics from social engineering and a confidence that when one speaks the truth, time will eventually validate you.

While environmental activists in NGOs, politics and academia collectively scrambled to more elaborate means to spin the redeeming correctness of the central narrative, that their end somehow justified whatever means were employed in its imposition, the paradigm at the center of it all has quietly and very publicly been refuted, repudiated and discredited. But, in scientific terms it is not yet refuted: an ideological proposition can not be refuted, and that is all AGW has ever been, an ideologically conspired assertion.

The paradigm that has galvanized environmentalism for the past 40 years (ecological limits, driven by human mismanagement, inducing a catastrophic and dystopian future) has been overtaken and bypassed by dynamic, progressive and prosperous change...worldwide. It is self-evident that the world has many remaining issues. But it is equally self-evident to the lay public that the world's problems are all issues for which progressive, astute human management can resolve and replace with something better. That process is rarely easy, seldom quick but it is inexorable.

About Me

Dr. L. Graham Smith has over thirty years experience as a researcher, teacher and consultant in resources management. The author of over 70 publications, his writings successfully balance academic and practical considerations and provide a systematic framework for empowering change. His areas of expertise include: environmental ideology; globalization; the dynamics of change; the design and implementation of strategic planning processes; sustainability and its implementation; individual and institutional capacity building; educational praxis and, skills development.

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Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity of a system to engage in the complexities of continuous improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose. Fullan (2005)

Dynamism is Freedom

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